


hephaestus

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: ruruka thinks about sonosuke.





	hephaestus

i. if you were so funny, i’d be your joke.

She loves to see his smile.

It’s rare and it’s subtle in the face of others’ acuity, but near is it each night along that she can perk his sweet lover’s lips. And sweet they are most often among those smiles, filled up in a spoonful of buttercream with kisses to chase. She loves to see his smile, so she’ll stuff him full of sugar morning to midnight, just as he pleases.

(Perhaps he’s gone a bit soft in the middle over the years, but she can only find him twice as cute with the puppy tummy).

Cooking for her love is a joy all her own, and she likes it well enough, though she’d ditch the habit quick as sin were he to decide he’s more interested in pickled ginger than ginger snaps, because it’s not about baking, it’s about Sonosuke, and everyone else who’s looked her up and down and deemed her worthless before scarfing a slice of her strawberry shortcake. Most often, it’s her Sonosuke and what he likes of her. So call it an obsession, but she’d found something to devote herself to early on, after attempts slipped into failure at crocheting and painting and all other talents that benefit the greater good. She’s accepted that she excels in only one area alone, and even then can find a dozen imperfections in every fork pressed pie crust. But Sonosuke likes her sweets- _loves_ them, rants and raves for another bite, just one more come on please babe, so bake sweets til her days run dry, she shall.

She’s sure he’d still like her even if her abilities fled the coop overnight. ...At least for a bit. He wouldn’t immediately kick her to the curb with pink chiffon dresses and C-cup lace tossed out the second story after her. Her Sonosuke is a gentleman, who’d have the decency to wait a week or two before flicking his eyes over the morning paper to tell her his patience’s run dry, that without her own spoon in the wedding cake mix, the whole fantasy’s wrung pointless. Right, right- she’ll nod herself around to hide the lines of mascara down each cheek to go on and pack her bags. Whatever her Sonosuke wants.

With the way she describes it, one from an outside view would deem her a taut collared mutt clutched by the fist of her boyfriend at the leash’s end. And one from a view a single step closer would realize she’s the true master to whip him behaved. Because she’s a bitch, and he’s her bitch, and their relationship holds no affection within it and she’s just brainwashing him with her candies and tarts to stay by her side.

Her teeth must tighten to think on it. She’s heard that breed of dirty chatter round the office walls, just before she’s to step into that break room and clatter her tray of muffins to the countertop. _Oh, these are delicious, Andou!_ And she smiles so sweetly to them back, then turns on a heel and prays to any God that will listen that they all choke on the chocolate chips.

ii. if you were a party, i’d be the pills.

Just maybe, maybe, she’s thought on too far about snacks. Only is it that it’s the majority of her days’ time taken planning and doing, flipping hotcakes on the stovetop and pulling blueberry bread from the inside, morning to midnight, just like her Sonosuke likes, and just like the thousands of patrons relying on her like as the head of the eighth division. Amazing-! She’s got the whole world counting on her. On her and her skills. On Andou Ruruka, luminary of the culinary universe.

She remembers spouting it all out the afternoon after she’d gotten the call from the Future Foundation recruiter, with her head in a lap and gasping wonder on her breath, and he’d ran a hand through her strawberry blonde to tell her well enough his pride.

That’s just it- she likes to be craved. Likes to be needed, likes to play the savior. For all of it brings the finest joy to those who should receive her care. She lives, she thinks, to please others, to bring happiness to the surface of lungs. Sometimes she lays awake at night, when their bedroom’s all murky mauve and the snores beside her rattle so vigorous, she lays awake to wonder just how altruistic a purpose for life that is, if it is the joy of others or the pats on her own back that truly dip her in the most bliss. Sometimes she wonders that, and then she wakes the next morning to prep two lunch bags for their afternoon at the office.

(She always leaves a note for him, even so simple as a sharpied heart on a post-it, because she knows the mirth it will bring to him to find beneath his crustless ham and monterey on white).

Those same office walls she ambles, she owns, the place she’d been taken in for work and he’d proven himself in an instant to fill another position if only to stay by her side throughout each day; she thinks she likes the job, even if the world’s ending and they were desperate to hire, and even if facing Yukizome-sensei again after so many years had pricked their ears in red. But still so, that encounter had trailed leagues behind the burn of who’d showed up around the bend of the hall after retrieving the rookie welcome letters in their mailbox slots. Not that Kimura had ever left her mind a second flat the past half decade, just _seeing_ her, right there in her pretty little face, and seeing her gasp behind her mask and scurry back to whatever hole she’d slunk from- that has tainted her in enough filth to start herself at the squeeze of a palm to her shoulder. Sonosuke had been there then to cool the fire from her cheeks, and Sonosuke had been there _then_ when their trio had melted like summer sand betwixt the fingers, and he’d always been there and always will be there, no matter what, no matter anything, she sees within his eyes as they claim hers. She thinks upon the doll her father had gifted her one birthday, a six or so score of months before she’d watched him be lowered two meters beneath the ground, and she thinks upon how familiar the sharp ridges to Sonosuke’s hands had seemed around that same doll after mending her lost arm once long past them now. They’d been only children then, though she can still recall that’s just when she’d first fallen.

iii. baby, if you were a picture, i’d be your frame.

A pin pricks scarlet from the thumb of her intellect to call herself out. Just so, she’s been wrapped up in this reverie of hers so long now, has wanted to focus on the dandelion wish come true that sleeps beside her each night and rubs the knots from her back should she whine enough, yet has found herself prattling on close anything but. Her mind, already divided into squirrel cell focus all day through, plays a prude for emotions spilt. Perhaps it’s the way the stars had aligned on one twentieth evening in a November far off, the perfect position to call her a scorpion child who trusts no soul and gifts no wit to her most inner feelings. To an extent, she’ll believe in all that zodiac blabber, and to an infinity, she’ll believe in the fantastical world of astrology, once a google search has shown Pisces and Scorpios can hold the most compatible, thrilling, deep red love relationship conceivable.

And there she goes again drifting off the side road. She isn’t forcing herself so much to divulge as she is to conceal. She’s an emotional woman as any are, though cannot spare any other catching her in the spotlight of anything but pure perfection lest she be knotted for the vulnerability. No one else but her Sonosuke, who’s as faultless a listener as he is a craftsman. Some days, she’s not the faintest clue what she’d do without him, without his charm to urge her from bed each morning, his hugs around her middle warmer than the coffee she clicks on for them. Her Sonosuke means...the world to her- don’t call her cliché, it’s the best she’s got! And it’s true, he is her world, her whole world with whipped cream on top, the most gentle hands to wipe the dew drops from her lashes, the comfort of a voice deep and lush, and- and, well, well well well, she can’t escape a day sans the thought of his chiseled perfect drop dead twice over handsomeness all over. Her tongue could just about loll from her lips. It’s quite only a plus, still, as she hadn’t cared for anyone’s looks in tag chases through playground woodchips, she’d only liked the way his hand had been so quick to offer her help whenever she should crash land within them (even though her mother had warned her to keep her laces tied- she’s just glad Hello Kitty had always been chivalrous enough to brand velcro sneakers, too). He’d always been there to pull her up to her feet and keep to himself as she brushed the mud from her skirt’s frills. She’d liked the soft benevolence in his every motion to her. She’d liked Izayoi Sonosuke, the boy in her elementary class that the other ones picked on for being so quiet.

It had taken only a step over to him during a morning snack time, one where her smile had guided his eyes to shine. “Hi!” Her teeth had gleamed the same as when her mother had let her pick out the box of animal crackers in the grocery aisle, the kind with the handle for her to clasp about like a purse to play pretend as a classy business lady going about her day, and likewise to offer outward to the boy sat by himself in the corner deemed The Alien by Okawa Satoshi, another classmate of theirs with a bandaid across his chin and dirty bastard in the making written up every nerve. But she’d said _hi_ , held out her snack, hoped her intuition would lead her right. “I’m Ruruka. Wan’ some animal crackers?”

She hadn’t minded at all being called The Alien’s girlfriend in the coming weeks upon which she’d always made sure to pack extra snacks, and she hadn’t minded, either, the call home her teacher had made to inform her mother that she’d bit another student so hard on the wrist he’d been brought to tears. Okawa hadn’t bothered either of them since.

iv. if you were the wounded, i’d be your pain.

Neither of them could hold within their palms a desirable upbringing into this world, things pricking each their skin that have built up to who they are and how they handle what’s thrown their way. Their way, and _in_ a way, the differences that bond them so strongly only slightly outweigh the similarities; they’re rough and tumble twenty somethings with no time to kill and all the same spend their days in soft lounging when they can, just to sap up another second in each other’s cherry sundae presence. That’s love, she herself would call it, would balance on his nose and command he not chomp it off before she allows. Though, she’d hate to tease him anyhow, and to his every blink down at her rests upon bedsheets, his silent waiting for nothing, nothing, she simpers extra cute his way, beckons him in a pat to curl up against her lacy pajama cotton. On occasion, too, he’ll blink-blink toward a morning’s new recipe, her bangs pinned back and baking powder smearing one cheek as she scrutinizes her measurements another time around, he’ll stand and he’ll wait for her to ask him, _how’s this taste? need more salt?_ with a spoonful of mix to his mouth. Never once would he ask first for her to click the mixer tongs out and hand them his way, but she sees the lust in his eyes until she smirks into doing so, thumbs the batter from his lip to try herself.

(She’s knows he’s just about the worst person for the task, as he’d never give an earnest enough critique for her to improve, lets him stay only for the puppydog cock to his head far too adorable to deny. She loves her Sonosuke).

v. i mean what i say.

Somewhere along the line, her yo yo string had knotted itself again, though she hasn’t the will to care all too much. It isn’t always what she can keep straight, what she _can_ say about the love of her lives without clenching into a muddled mess of fear, more so what she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t have to tell Sonosuke that she love love loves him so much it makes her insides ache at every glance his way, doesn’t have to tell him _God_ , thank you, thank you more than she could ever possibly express for all he’s done for her and still continues to do, doesn’t have to be mushy every moment in the verbal, because it’s so goddamn hard and it’s so goddamn petrifying. Andou can’t quite formulate the right words outside bedtime love yous, so she hopes the lunchbox notes, kisses from throat to nose, nuzzles of her own into his shoulder, every last moment spent spilling the core of her to him and him alone- she hopes all that she is can make up for all that she lacks. She hopes he knows she cares.

The smears of blacksmith grease she finds all across the bathroom towels cannot bother her enough for a fit the same evening she’s spent dawdling ankle deep in the thought of him, because she loves him and because she cares, and because her Sonosuke is her whole entire world, even if he drives her just the faintest bit wild. There’s no way she’d rather it. No way.


End file.
